Commenting on market watchers' pessimistic view toward netbook's future as PC players are turning aggressive about the tablet PC market, Acer Taiwan president Scott Lin at a press conference noted that netbooks will not die. After Intel upgraded its Atom processor, netbook's price/performance ratio saw a significant improvement and the segment is expected to maintain a stable share of the notebook market, separate from tablet PCs.

Lin forecasts that global netbook shipments in 2010 will still be about 40 million units, accounting for 20% of the overall notebook market. In 2011, Lin believes that the netbook market is unlikely to see further growth and will remain at the same scale with only Acer and Asustek Computer left to prop up the market since both Hewlett-Packard (HP) and Dell are not active toward the segment.

As for Intel's new Atom N550 processor, based on Acer's internal testing, the new processor performs 50% faster than the previous generation model, but the price is at about the same range. Since new netbooks are priced at US$300-400, about the same as previous models, while having better performance, Lin believes the price/performance ratio should help attract consumers.

As for smartphone business, the initial batch of 2,000 Acer Stream smartphones in Taiwan were sold out by telecom carrier Far EasTone Telecommunications (FET) and Acer expects its smartphone shipments to reach two million units in 2010 and will double to 4-5 million units in 2011.